[SPOILERS - PBEM29] spacetyrantxenu - Mao of Babylon

[spacetyrantxenu]

Hopefully no one hates the constant spam of our diplomatic emails from today, but for anyone counting, this post evens the post count. I still want to win something in this game!

[spacetyrantxenu]

[COLOR="Cyan"]Ok I took a look at the save, I can have 8 Hwachas, 5 Pikes, 4 Maces and Tits Mcgee my medic 3 chariot ready to enter sian's culture on turn 118.

In the Tundra Sian currently has:
3 Crossbows
6 Knights
3 Longbows
1 Spear
1 Archer

Do gifted units get to move after the handover? If so you could bring some units into my culture turn 116 (e.g. onto the horse tile). You could then gift the units over to me, and I could assemble them on the deer tile ready to enter Sian's culture turn 118. If you bring all of the knights, pikes and longbows we may have chance of actually holding the city, particularly with my Medic 3 healing magic. We can then work on hitting Ragnar (his colossus city) next.

Note I'd request a couple of longbows to use in defense of OHP whose garrison will be severely shrunk by the proposed action.

In the Jungle region, relevant units I have are:
2 pikes
8 Hwachas
10 Maces
Crossbow
Longbow

Problem with this stack is as soon as I take them across the border they'd be hit by a stack of knights Sian has in the background and the unpromoted macemen would be annhilated, because I wouldn't get first strike with my catapults. If you have more pikes up that way then I'd be willing to use some of my guard units. But i feel the loss of his tundra cities, particularly Ragnar would hurt more.

slowcheetah
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[spacetyrantxenu]

[COLOR="Magenta"]Considering that once I gift you the units they won't move until the turn rolls, so it will be the next turn when you get to them and they should have full mobility when you are ready to issue commands.

When I get the save I'll probably be OK with sending the house at Sian. If there's one thing Mao is good at, it's building a ton of old crappy obsolete longbows So I'll be able to restock my domestic garrisons if needed, and will be able to throw more worthless peasants carrying LBs and pikes toward the front, along with whatever else we can manage. Oh, that sound you hear? Mao is readying his whip.

I'll send LBs toward OHP, I think I have a few that can leave Jon Huntsman this turn. I agree that pushing through the tundra and threatening Sian's best/oldest core cities first makes sense. When Dazed is mercifully released from his NAP on T125 I expect he'll have a hoard of peasants wielding guns and pikes to unleash on Sian.

-Xenu
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[Boldly Going Nowhere]

If you're relying on movement after gifting, you should definitely sim that so you don't get caught with your pants down.

Game seems to be heating up finally. Good luck!

[spacetyrantxenu]

Not enough heat and far too late. This pot will never boil.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T115 - Well the worker steal was probably always destined to fail. I should have just deleted them. Oh well, it won't make much of a difference anyway. Not a whole lot to report, I took a bunch of pictures to show the state of the game. Incidentally, when Sian killed my C2 knight with his own C2 knight, that's the first unit I've lost in this game. 1100 AD to first blood? Whaaaat?

In other news, Mao went a bit whip happy and the result is that unit production is keeping up with the rigorous demands Mao has established:



Some end of turn maps:

Thar be part of what Sian has hiding out in the north. I moved my chariot back to safety, but in Sian's territory in case he wants to come get it.


I have a mini stack of tundra explorers heading to meet up with Slowcheetah. I'll probably gift them when they arrive in his territory for ease of coordination.
I know this isn't much of an invasion force, it's basically the garrison I had hanging around Jon Huntsman and stuff rolling out of city build queues.


I'm not worried about Slowcheetah betraying me, if he does I'll just call it GG. Same goes for Dazed. Straying from the alliance by any of us at this point would mean foregoing pulling Sian back, so it would be pointless to continue anyway. (As if it isn't already).

So, back to the failed worker steal. Here's what Sian covered it with. Surely he wasn't just baiting me into declaring war. Surely he isn't that bored with this game? If he had these units, why not just cover the workers? He must have known that we knew he could build grenadiers. This isn't a surprise.


An end of turn view of the region:

Info dump incoming.

[spacetyrantxenu]

So my army sucks and I know it. Here's the meh composition:

I'm obviously heavy on defense. There isn't a lot of striking power in this group. The lack of siege is obvious, but everything I've seen from Sian so far has been knights and more knights, with a smattering of other stuff, so until it's time to go knocking down cities who cares about collateral? (Oh, right, I'm the one of the Allies making the beeline for cannons, oops).

Speaking of research previous screens show me researching Paper at 0%. I'm not sure but Sian may have research visibility on me. My EP cost is at 128% against him, from an allocation of 1004/705. I don't know what the threshold is for research visibility but we're surely close. And we desperately need better military tech so I can't waste time running espionage slider. Anyway I'm just saving cash for a few turns so I can hide my research in case he can see what I'm up to. Showing Paper indicates a run toward PP and maybe Rifles. I'm pretty sure Sian can see what Slowcheetah is teching (799/309 EP lead), so why not throw him off the scent, it costs me only 8 beakers per turn I'm dumping into Paper (wait, that's 8 beakers + 40% prereq. bonuses, + 2 civs already know the tech...so what is it, like 12 beakers I'm getting? )

Back to my unit composition, I have basically that small northern mini-stack with which to harass Sian and I'm going to gift it to Slowcheetah to do the dirty work. I know that would cut me out of any capture spoils but I'm not likely taking anything with that force and no collateral. Maybe he can make some headway. In the meantime I'm building a ton of pikes since that's the best thing I can do to kill knights. It's not like there's anything I can do to counter the grenadiers he can build anyway, except for longbows. But even those aren't as good as they used to be since the grenadiers will ignore walls/castles (which I've built two of so far, in Jon Huntsman on the tundra front and in Bob Dole on the island where Sian took cities). The walls won't help against gunpowder units but it will make it all but impossible for him to throw knights at me. And walls/castles are stupid cheap, thanks protective.

Demographics stuff:

MOAR INFO.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

How is the diplo with Dazed going? Has he offered any explanation for his cash saving? Surely his maintenance costs aren't that high. Time for another war conference.

Which civics are you changing to? HR/slavery/Bureau/.../.../theo?

I'd save any more unit whips until you've revolted, but probably just produce w/o whips during the GA unless you're hard-pressed for defense. I don't see that happening right away, though. Sian may wait until he can get some cannons built to go with his rifles, and probably until he's taken more of a bite out of Slowcheetah.

I really think that Dazed is just biding his time and not committing. He needs a backstab for his lack of commitment. I could be wrong though, maybe he's queuing up units now to pop out in 10T when his NAP expires with minimal hammer decay. But, I don't really think that's the case. He's growing his cottages and hoping that he can let everyone else pull Sian back.

[spacetyrantxenu]

No, if Dazed has shown anything in this game it's a willingness to do whatever is strictly best for him. His power buildup belies any commitment to the war cause. He's hoping that Slowcheetah and I can do the nasty work of dragging down Sian, and then when he declares on T125 he can throw a token force at Sian to say he helped. Then when the war is over, he'll emerge as the lone superpower unscathed by the fighting. Not to mention that around that time his cottage economy should be rapidly accelerating, beginning to leverage his land and population advantages. So if Sian doesn't win the game, Dazed is poised to be next man to the top by virtue of screwing over me and Slowcheetah. So my options are to not help now and thereby allow Sian to win, or to help now and butcher my own chances of winning since Dazed won't commit properly. Fun fun.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T116 - Well we have our answer about what Dazed was doing saving all that cash. He spawned a golden age last turn and set science to 100%. His output in a GA at max research looks to be comparable to what we can do at 100% without a GA, but it's still frustrating to be behind again. Our Great Person is due in 2 turns, at which time we'll kick off our own GA, mostly for increased hammers to get these units into the field, but the commerce boost will be very nice as well so we can get our tech sooner. I think we'll just keep saving cash for now and do the same thing, run at 100% science longer during our own golden age. We may as well, having 17 libraries built and only 7 markets + 1 each of bank/grocer. We burn 321 gpt @100% research so two more turns of saving while waiting on the GP will allow us almost 3 turns of max GA research. Not as much as Dazed but good nonetheless.

I explored the SE a bit with Steve Inskeep:

Not much inside the city, and just the defensively postured grenadier on the hill. I just realized that Dazed is being a real ass about pumping culture in Function, from T115 (last turn) the pigs tile we were close to reclaiming inside Rudy's BFC that is 3rd ring to Function but 2nd ring to Rudy has now reversed course and is now at 52/47 culture vs. the 50/49 it was last turn. Is this a result of my culture not being added yet for this turn? Or a factor from the golden age? If not, come on. He has enough culture there without forcing me off a resource that he can't even use. he's already taken back the rest of his usable BFC. I'm sure he's building cultural buildings instead of units there, whatever is good for Dazed. I'm not going to spend the time figuring out what he has in there, if someone else wants to, go ahead. Up close of Function:

Sorry about the unit promotion glow.

At a glance I see a library, monument, granary, walls, then some other buildings I don't know what they are. He has Confucianism here so maybe a temple and monastery?

So...moving units. At Mehmed, I have to decide whether to push an attack or not. Sian probably has enough units in the fog to repel anything I throw over there and I do not have collateral to knock down the walls or do much to the LB/knight inside. Basically anything I do to attack at this point is going to be a massively uneven hammer trade, so for now I'll just hang out in Dazed's city and let Sian look at my units. Or better yet, I'll fall back to the "staging tile" Dazed was so upset about me not using and wait there. If I'm teching to cannons, it makes sense to save attack units for when they can actually accomplish something. That, or just swarm him Zerg style when I have enough soldiers on hand to accomplish something other than feeding Sian XP. In the meantime if I tie up his defensive units here that is a good outcome as it will mean he has less units available to send for defense on the main attack front.

So what does that front look like at the end of the turn?

Sian still has the same units on the tile marked from T115 (yellow circle), they've just healed a bit. Two crossbows, 1 knight, and one longbow are waiting to die. I know Sian sees my stack, he was going to see it soon anyway. But if he reacts to it, that will take a bit of pressure off Slowcheetah for now, hopefully anyway. These units are heading into Slowcheetah's culture. I'll hide them from Sian's view and then gift them. Hopefully I'll finish several units that turn to hide the transaction, not that it really matters who controls them. It will be easier for Slowcheetah to move all these units on his turn, rather than having Sian operate in between us. Since Slowcheetah has the hwachas, he needs to act first in an invasion/attack to soften the target before the hitters come to the plate. There's no use in Sian having a turn to heal in between our attacks (in turn order, Slowcheetah is 1, Sian 2, I'm 3, Dazed 4 for anyone catching up on this game).

There's also action upcoming on the island we share. From the positioning of Sian's knights, he was down in Slowcheetah's territory last turn. I wonder if I've inadvertently saved Get Me Jewelry? Sian has 5 C1,Shock knights and a C2 HA now facing my territory. He's either been spooked by me massing units and is sending them for defense (unlikely) or he's planning to invade. Good luck with that, he can't take my city with just those. I'm up to 9 units in Gary Johnson, walls finish at end of turn on overflow alone, followed by a castle the next turn. At that point he should probably just move on back to attacking Slowcheetah or move the knights back toward Mansa Musa where they can do something useful, like attack me if I step into his culture. They'll just feed me XP if he attacks Gary Johnson (so I encourage the effort).

Info:

More weapons, please.


Dazed and Slowcheetah are in a golden age. I'm doing...okay? But not well enough. Still losing ground.


I hope Dazed is researching something we need with this commerce boost. If he doesn't come away with Rifling or at least RP, well....


Dazed is building some army, his power graph below shows it, but he's not focusing on it 100% or his graph should be rising faster than mine, since he has more cities. But maybe with the hammer boost he can get busy soon?


Yep. The declining rate of increase belies the problem. Infrastructure builds, not military. The trouble is, for all the power I'm building I'm still only running parallel to Sian. His production potential is just higher. He configured his tiles for maximum hammers and it has worked well for him.

Does anyone want to see anything else? Is anyone here? These reports will be a great deal shorter in a few weeks when I move down to join my family. I won't be able to take a few hours to play two turns of civ and then write about it.